


As if we were still lovers

by rudbeckia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Assassination, Implied Relationships, M/M, Murder, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-22 13:35:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30039480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: General Hux wakes up in a shuttle knowing three things.1. The Final Order is gone.2. The First Order might be saved.3. Kylo Ren knows he’s a traitor.Oh yes, 4. Kylo Ren must die.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Beware the Ides of Kylux





	As if we were still lovers

Hux woke with what started as a sharp intake of breath and collapsed into a groan of pain. A cool hand touched his forehead, not with the light caress of a concerned parent (had he really been dreaming of his mother?) but with necessary and proportionate force to keep him from trying to sit up.  
“Sir, lie still. The medidroid is doing its best.”

Ah. Hux took a few more breaths, in and out though his nose to a slow count of eight. Odd, he thought, that despite the uniformity enforced on his officers, this one smelled familiar in a way that put him at ease.  
“Mitaka.” Hux blinked in the foggy darkness. “Are there no kriffing lights on this ship?”  
The cool hand moved from his forehead to his arm. “Saving power, sir. The medidroid doesn’t need light to work on your wounds. You took a real hammering.”  
“Well.” Hux closed his eyes since there was no point straining to see. “Pryde’s aim always was appalling. Even for an imperial.”  
Mitaka laughed softly. “Your plackart dissipated the blast but your ribs still took a beating, and the force of the blast blew you across the floor. We thought you might have a slight concussion.” There’s a moment of silence. “How is your head, sir?”  
Now he was awake enough, Hux could feel the throb inside his skull layered over a constant dull pain. “I was once told,” he said evenly, “that it is only possible to concentrate on one pain at a time. Funny time to find out that it is not true.”

Mitaka patted Hux’s arm and then sat back. After a minute, Hux asked, “What happened?”  
“Like you said, sir, after he shot you, Captain Opan and I—”  
“No, no, obviously that plan worked,” Hux said with a hint of impatience. “And thank you for your loyalty and competence. I mean, what of the Final Order? What of Kylo Ren? What kind of galactic cockup am I going to have to sort out?”  
“Oh.” Hux heard a deep sigh. “Gone, sir.” Another deep sigh, followed by a quiet resignation. “All of it. Every star destroyer. And their crews. Gone. You wouldn’t have believed it but... out of nowhere. So many little ships. Like mosquitoes.”  
“Gone?” Hux opened his eyes and tried to sit up from sheer surprise but regretted it when pain radiated through his torso. He groaned and fell back onto the bunk. “Who’s in charge?”  
“Pryde is dead, down with his ship. I watched it fall. It exploded and rained down onto the planet in pieces. So did the rest of the fleet. We only survived because we got out of the hangar before the Steadfast exploded.”  
“I see.” Hux clenched and unclenched his fists. “And the Supreme Leader?”  
“Nobody knows,” Mitaka replied quietly, hand again on Hux’s arm in a reassuring squeeze. “He did not return from his last mission.”

Hux supposed he dozed because when he again became aware of his surroundings, the quiet but ever-present hum of the shuttle’s electricals was absent and a little blueish light filtered through the forward viewports.  
“Where are we?” he demanded, sitting up, the agony from his injuries replaced by a dull ache along his ribs. He got to his feet and found that he could walk. Mitaka reclined in the pilot seat, fast asleep, mouth open and snoring. Hux reached out to wake him but stopped his hand from shaking the man’s shoulder. There was no need to confirm their location: lit here and there by lightning flashes as bright as a star, throwing dark, sharp shadows across one another, lay the remains of the Final Order fleet.

“Exegol,” he said quietly, and cursed. The sound disturbed Mitaka, who started awake with a cry, lurched forward and pawed at the console. Hux laid a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, lieutenant. Remember who you are and what you represent.”  
“Sir.” Mitaka rubbed his face, hauled himself to his feet, and saluted.  
Hux smiled. “That’s better. Now, I am going to require caf and a full report. See to it.”

Hux sat back in the co-pilot seat while Mitaka and Opan between them described what had happened from when Pryde’s blaster bolt hit the beskar of his custom-made body plate until their shuttle landing on Exegol. He knew three things.

One. Pryde, along with the entire Last Order, was dead.  
Two. There were still First Order ships here and there, sent on other business, or in repair and rebuild like The Finalizer.  
Three. Kylo Ren knew that he was the traitor.  
Therefore, four. Kylo Ren had to die.

“Well, then,” he said to the two pairs of worried looking eyes that gazed back into his. “We ought to make contact with the rest of the Order without delay.” A bolt of lightning struck the command tower of a nearby ship and made Mitaka flinch. Hux pinned him with a look that radiated confidence he did not quite feel. “We will regroup, recover, and rebuild without the poison of the Imperial remnant in our veins.”  
“Yes, sir!” Mitaka stood to attention. Opan followed suit.  
“And I must locate the Supreme Leader. We must be absolutely sure that the Order is not left without a reliable leader.”  
“Yes, sir.” Opan gave Hux a neutral look.  
Hux nodded at him once. “Give me a datapad.”

Opan held out one of the shuttle’s datapads. Hux entered his security clearance, held his breath while the First Order systems loaded, and sighed in relief when his welcome message flashed on the screen. He activated a personnel search, waited while the information slowly loaded, and smiled. Kylo Ren was still on Exegol.

“There.” Hux brought up a map. “The Supreme Leader is nearby. Presumably he also has a shuttle or some other serviceable transport. You will take me to him, and then use the remaining fuel in this shuttle to get yourselves back to The Finalizer. Opan, I want you to do a full audit of the Order’s strength. Mitaka, I will see that you are promoted to Major as soon as I receive your detailed report on the Battle of Exegol from the comfort of the sofa in my chambers.” He grimaced at the little blinking red icon that represented Kylo Ren. “I will rejoin you there as soon as I have secured the leadership of this New Order.”  
Opan gave a knowing nod. Mitaka saluted again and murmured, “Is it too early to say, _thank you, Leader Hux?”_  
“It is a tad premature, Dopheld.” Hux smiled at him anyway. “But our New Order will have no room for an unstable maniac like Ren.”  
“Sir, you’ll want this. I took it from Pryde’s rooms and kept it safe for you.” Mitaka, cheeks still warm from hearing his name fall from General Hux’s tongue, opened the emergency box under the console and pulled out a familiar object. Hux reached for it, genuine thanks in his eyes, and fastened the sheath containing his monomolecular blade onto his forearm, its welcome pressure and slight weight making him feel untouchable once more.

Within two hours, Hux found himself standing in front of a huge structure with a mobile tracking unit in one hand and a standard-issue blaster in the other. Opan and Mitaka had taken the shuttle, on his orders, and would claim back The Finalizer in his name. His task now was to find and kill Kylo Ren.

Inside the structure was a scene of devastation that put into context even the wreckage wrought by an entire fleet birthing from underground shipyards, tearing gaping holes in the planet surface, and then plunging back down to bury itself in twisted and shattered pieces. He picked his way around what remained of the Knights of Ren, recognisable only by their helmet designs, closed his eyes at the first arc discharge that lit up in harsh blue the scattered remains of guards and acolytes, then forced himself to look. Kylo Ren had done this, he said to himself. Kylo Ren and Snoke and the Emperor and all they stood for. Well, that was gone now. history would know that Hux’s New Order cleansed the First and the Final from its ranks and rose pure from the ashes. He smiled a little grimly, and hoped he would remember that turn of phrase for his victory speech.

Kylo Ren was close. Hux consulted the mobile tracker unit he’d taken from the shuttle before ordering his men to leave. Down. He had to reach a lower level. Ren’s red blip seemed to be directly underneath him. Ahead, in the next power discharge, he saw a platform part sunken and tilted. He carefully stepped onto it—it seemed stable enough—and went into a controlled slide to the lower edge. Trusting that there was floor to land on, he made his body relax and let himself slip from the edge.

Just as the first doubts about the sanity of his action surfaced, Hux landed with a cry and crumpled. He was alive, not badly injured, and as safe as could be expected. The rank air stank of sharp ozone and sickening, charring death. Gripping the blaster tightly, he took his bearings in the ever preset flicker of arc discharge light and headed across the cracked and warped floor of what had once been a vast amphitheatre to where a dark shape huddled on the ground.

Ren.

Hux’s anger surged. This was Ren’s fault. All of it. It was a direct result of Ren’s desire to make him powerless by subjecting him to Pryde’s command that Hux had betrayed the Order. No, he told himself as he approached. He’d betrayed Ren, and only because Ren had betrayed him first. Ren had no place in a galaxy ruled by Hux. He looked at the tracker readout again. Ren was alive, but it would only take a nudge to push him over into death.

Hux aimed and fired.

The plasma bolt shot towards Ren, but froze in the air inches from its target. Hux stared, open-mouthed, as the crumpled heap unfolded and rolled aside, then stood up shakily. The sizzling red light of the blaster bolt illuminated Ren’s face as he studied it and, when he turned to look questioningly at Hux, Hux took a sharp breath in at the sight of a smooth, unscarred face.  
“I thought,” Ren said, stepping closer to Hux, “you had given up trying to kill me. There’s no need. Not now. Hux, it’s all over. You must see that you lost.”

Hux was breathing hard now, and getting light headed. He yelled, “Of course there’s a need! We could have had everything. Everything! Except your ego scorched it all. We could have ruled the galaxy! Together! You and I on the throne. Like you promised.” Head spinning, tears of frustration running down his cheeks, Hux made himself calm his breathing. He clenched his hands, focused on the pain from the hard grip of the blaster in one hand, and his ragged fingernails in the palm of the other. “You ruined it. You are everything that was wrong with the First Order. You cannot be allowed to spread your rot in the next one.”

Ren shook his head. He swayed on his feet and the blaster bolt slammed into the floor where he had been lying. “I’m not... Hux... I’m not who I was.”

Hux saw his chance. He couldn’t win against Kylo Ren, but this pathetic creature was weak. He raised his blaster again only to have it knocked from his hand by some unseen blow, then he leapt forward, wincing as pain flared once more in his ribs, shaking his dagger into his hand. As his blade sank up into the flesh between Ren’s ribs like a warm knife through butter, Ren’s arm came around his neck and squeezed, and their bodies sank together.

They’d be found like this, he thought bitterly, Ren’s arms around his corpse as if they were still lovers, his dagger in Ren’s silent heart. A crime of passion, perhaps.

At least, he thought as consciousness left him, he’d taken Kylo Ren with him.


End file.
